Subscribe for Updates via Email

I’ve been working on a presentation for a startup to use to pitch their business to VC firms and I’ve used and shared this template enough now that I thought I would share it with all of you. Every company is different and my experience has been mainly around Business to Business companies but in general I think the flow works. The slide where you describe current customers will change for a business to consumer play but otherwise the rest applies.

Here is the flow:

The vision

Market opportunity

Customers

The business problem

What is the product/solution

Value proposition

Sales

Partnerships

Acquiring and retaining customers

Revenue model

Development plan

Team

Current customers/pipeline

Fund raising

VC fit

It’s up on Slideshare and anyone can download it.
Am I missing anything?

20 Comments

April,
Great list. Here are some other items I would consider (may be some over lap to some you’ve noted)
—
-competition?
-exit possibilities, timing
-growth of value in the investment (money the VC will make)
-barriers to entry for competitors
-Why the venture fits with the VC’s portfolio
-Comparative companies and valuations

LOL! I was waiting for someone to call me on the competition one. I actually posted the wrong version of this deck by mistake – the only missing slide is a “competitive landscape” slide.
Exit possibilities is an interesting one. I like to show synergies in the slides that cover partnerships but I feel back talking about exits so early on in the process.
Barriers to entry is a great suggestion. I’m going to add that.
April

Yes, you are probably right about that. The trick is that you need to be ready to talk about all of this stuff. If you can do that with fewer slides, great but I’ve not had many meetings where we didn’t get into each of these topics.
April

Guy Kawasaki also suggests limiting the number of slides to ten. His recommended template is:
1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action
You might reconsider your “market opportunity” and “value proposition” slides. The problem, the market opportunity and the value proposition are essentially the same thing, or at least are very closely related.

Thanks for the comment. I like Guy’s list but I would be very careful about getting rid of the market opportunity slide. That slide is not about the value proposition at all but rather about sizing the market opportunity. Specifically it’s where you look at the total size of the market you are going after and what piece of that market your product would be able to address. For startups it’s really hard to get an accurate view of this but ultimately it’s the slide that shows whether or not your idea has the ability to grow beyond 10-50 million in revenue to over 100 million in revenue. I’ve never presented to a VC where we didn’t have a long discussion around addressable market size.
The other piece that would be missing is what you will do around strategic partnerships. For some products that piece isn’t that important but for virtually any B2B product it is critical to early stage growth.
April

It would be interesting to see what Kawasaki would say in response to your points. I’m sure he would agree that market size is important, but I suspect he would address it in one of his existing slides. The “problem” slide may again be the right place for it, as market segmentaton and sizing really just classify the urgency, and quantify the pervasiveness, of the problem.
As far as strategic partnerships, they have a purpose – whether it be as sales channels, co-marketers, etc. I’d argue that info on partnerships should go in those slides. In one of my business plans, for example, the marketing section contains the information about partnerships, because the partnerships are a key part of the marketing strategy.

Market size is irrelevant – anyone who says “it’s a billion dollar market so if I can just get 1% we’ll all be rich” should be shot on sight. Large markets mean low barriers to entry and high competition – no thanks! Niche market domination please

Matt, thanks for the comment. One of the most annoying things I found in doing VC pitches was that there was a certain category of VC that wanted to see a slide that showed that there was a billion dollar market opportunity, no matter how vague or unbelievable the methodology was that came up with that number. I’m seeing less of that in recent months but there are still some folks out there that want to see it. I think there are large markets out there that can be disrupted but it’s really hard to get credible numbers on them before the disruption has taken place.
April

I find it interesting that business model is so often ignored when VCs invest in companies. Really. I’ve seen quite a few outfits get money with no realistic business model to speak of.
While I agree that business model is critical, are there some VCs or some situations where it just doesn’t matter up front?